I'm still waiting on a decision from my school in NY and I've started looking for alternative plans. This has caused somewhat of a conundrum because now I'm kind of excited about those plans and would be a little disappointed if I got into my phd program and couldn't do them. I'm officially tired of this application cycle. When you reach the point where you would be disappointed no matter what the response is, there is no way to be excited about anything. No excitement = lots of worrying and thinking and planning. And at this point, I just want to take a nap. Ugh. So, purgatory continues.
In other news, I'm pretty good at my forensic cases. I'm especially excited about the current one, where for the past two weeks I've been looking at the femoral heads of one individual thinking there had to be something wrong. It just looks weird, kind of flattened on one side with a little groove. This is not normal. My anthropology buddy, who is much more experienced, kept saying it was within the range of normality. Until low and behold, I find this: Poirier's facet!
(The groove and bone growth between the ball and the neck, Mann and Hunt 2005)Insert 'happy, competent physical anthropologist' dance here.
I found the answer flipping through my copy of Mann and Hunt. I love this book!
I've been sharing my copy with the group and we have all found exactly what we were looking for as we have flipped through at random. It seems to be kind of magical. You open it up thinking 'this femur is weird' and then it flips to a picture of a weird femur looking exactly like the one sitting in front of you! Magic!
So if anyone is a bone student looking for a good guide, I would highly recommend buying a copy, especially when it's half the cost of so many others.
